Point: Protests Good
Anna Sedney
Issue date: 2/6/02 Section: Commentary
- Page 1 of 2 next >
A protest is only as effective as its impact. There is no point in protesting without the goal of achieving a tangible result. The recent protest at Cardinal McCarrick’s mass by those advocating the GLBT Center has raised the question in many minds of what is appropriate. Is it appropriate to lead a politically motivated protest at spiritual event?
The answer to that question has to be an almost-unqualified yes. As long as those who are there simply for religious reasons are not harassed, there is no reason why protests should not occur. No one heckled the Cardinal. After all, what is a mysterious and awesome event for Catholics is really just a tasteless cracker and watered-down wine for everyone else (and yes, I am a semi-practicing Catholic). Standing through Masses is not an original idea for a protest; there is a well-documented history for this. In her book Chasing Grace, Martha Manning (another practicing Catholic) describes how the women of her parish stood through Mass every week to protest the exclusion of women from the priesthood. And this was not just her parish, but a widespread phenomenon. Yes, the poor souls sitting behind these women had a great view of butts, not the priest. But recall the story of Doubting Thomas — if you have to see the priest to get spiritual fulfillment, I think you are missing something.
Did the YALA and GIA protesters this past weekend violate shoppers’ rights to donate large amounts of money to the Abercrombie and J. Crew charities? Is my right to pray undisturbed really any more or less important than my right to walk down M St.? A protest has to somehow disrupt the life of its observers, or else no one would notice the protest, and, by extension, never notice the problem, which would then never get solved.
In order to gain the right to vote, British women chained themselves to the Prime Minister’s front stoop, and even to his carriage. Of course he was disrupted and inconvenienced by this. You know what? British women got the right to vote in 1918. The Montgomery, Ala. bus boycotts took a large amount of revenue from those buses. The buses were desegregated. In the 1980s businesses pulled out of South Africa in droves, protesting apartheid. This bothered people. Investors lost potential markets, and, for a while, businesses in the country suffered. Apartheid was abolished.
The answer to that question has to be an almost-unqualified yes. As long as those who are there simply for religious reasons are not harassed, there is no reason why protests should not occur. No one heckled the Cardinal. After all, what is a mysterious and awesome event for Catholics is really just a tasteless cracker and watered-down wine for everyone else (and yes, I am a semi-practicing Catholic). Standing through Masses is not an original idea for a protest; there is a well-documented history for this. In her book Chasing Grace, Martha Manning (another practicing Catholic) describes how the women of her parish stood through Mass every week to protest the exclusion of women from the priesthood. And this was not just her parish, but a widespread phenomenon. Yes, the poor souls sitting behind these women had a great view of butts, not the priest. But recall the story of Doubting Thomas — if you have to see the priest to get spiritual fulfillment, I think you are missing something.
Did the YALA and GIA protesters this past weekend violate shoppers’ rights to donate large amounts of money to the Abercrombie and J. Crew charities? Is my right to pray undisturbed really any more or less important than my right to walk down M St.? A protest has to somehow disrupt the life of its observers, or else no one would notice the protest, and, by extension, never notice the problem, which would then never get solved.
In order to gain the right to vote, British women chained themselves to the Prime Minister’s front stoop, and even to his carriage. Of course he was disrupted and inconvenienced by this. You know what? British women got the right to vote in 1918. The Montgomery, Ala. bus boycotts took a large amount of revenue from those buses. The buses were desegregated. In the 1980s businesses pulled out of South Africa in droves, protesting apartheid. This bothered people. Investors lost potential markets, and, for a while, businesses in the country suffered. Apartheid was abolished.
Be the first to comment on this story